For the first time in weeks, we have what looks to be a day that will be without rain.
We would welcome it, should it appear, but in truth, the respite is well-timed. There is mowing to be done, to say nothing of tilling and planting, and ceaseless days of rain allow for none of them.
It might also be nice, for the first time in a good while, to catch a glimpse of the waning moon, and of the web of stars that holds the world in its embrace; nice, too, to see the summer sky’s purple gradient as twilight becomes night. And, of course, the return of the warmth is welcome, too, for this early and active rainy season has made for a cold climate indeed.
This week’s #ThrowbackThursday feature work is manifest in that same web of stars, as well as the amethyst glow of dusk. It’s a #TBT work that dates back to last summer: the threshold over which July becomes August, in 2022. It was a special commission by a dear friend, one of a pair of hair cuffs that she had asked Wings to build around specific stones: the first, in a beautiful specimen of Bird of Paradise agate; the second, to be set with the same amethyst she had seen in another of Wings’s works. We featured the former in this space last year, but I’ve been waiting for the perfect weaving of celestial themes to feature the second. This is that work.
Hair cuffs are designed to adorn ponytails or braids or individual smaller locks of hair. They are exactly what they sound like: a work formed into the arc of a cuff to wrap around the front of the lock in question, with a pick at the center of the inner curvature, around which the ponytail holder or rubber band attaches. We’ll get to the inner workings of such pieces in a moment, but first, I want to point out the Beauty of the stone set onto this cuff’s outer surface.
Our friend has amassed a sizeable collection of hair cuffs that she’s commissioned from Wings over the years, each one unique. They have been set, variously, with a wide array of turquoise cabochons, blues and greens alike, lapis lazuli, moonstone, hawk’s eye, and other extraordinary jewels. Because of the very design of such pieces, smaller cabochons tend to work best, and with those like the Bird of Paradise agate version linked above, Wings has to elevate the bezel to keep it secure (because the stone is wider than the uncurved top of the cuff). With those pieces, he tends to keep the stampwork simple and spare, with plenty of negative space, and let the stones do the speaking.
The smaller cabochons fit much better . . . but they leave a broader expanse of silver visible, and so he tends to add more comprehensive patterns to the surface to balance it properly. In one memorable instance, with an extraordinary but very small cabochon of high-grade Damele turquoise in deep mossy greens, he elected simply to hammer the entire surface of the cuff by hand, creating an image much like a lush green island in the middle of a silver sea. The one featured here today includes a. much more complex pattern (and we’ll get to that in a moment), but what the image above shows is how beautifully it set off the amethyst gem at its center, its high-domed surface held gently in a low-profile saw-toothed bezel, allowing the sides of the stone to catch and filter the light from all angles.
In the right light, at the right angle, it was positively ethereal, like the Aurora’s violet shimmer, or a plummy version of foxfire.
Before we get to the stampwork, though, you ned to see the inner structure:
The basic shape is the same for every such piece that Wings creates: a rectangle of sterling silver, typically somewhere between an inch and a half and two inches across, the length proportional to the width, cut freehand and filed smooth. Flat, each piece is far wider than it appears, because the arc needs to be fairly steep to hold the hair properly. He does the stampwork first, while the silver is flat, then gently shapes it around a mandrel, hammering lightly but repeatedly with a leather mallet until it reaches the appropriate curvature.
Once it’s shaped as he intends, then he turns it over, holding it in a pair of miniature tweezer-style vises. Then he fashions the pick, by cutting a length of sterling silver wire, usually pattern wire, to the proper length. This was pattern wire in a flowing, graceful design that evokes the edges of old Alphonse Mucha posters, all Art Nouveau florals with trailing stalks and vines, the latter woven and braided into patterns that vaguely resemble Celtic knotwork.
Once cut to the proper length (which will be a bit longer than the height of the hair cuff, he gently bends the top end over into a snug loop and files the other end to a point. The loop end is soldered securely at the very center of the top of the inside of the cuff, while the long end is bent gently inward close to the inner surface. This construction creates tension in the pick, allowing it to hold the hair more securely, too.
Once the basic structure is complete, Wings returns to the outer surface to deal with the gemwork.
I saved this close-up shot for last, because it gives such a stunning perspective on the stampwork, in which top and bottom mirror each other, as do the sides. It’s a masterpiece of freehand stamp ing and scoring, in a complex design that covers the hair cuff from end to end and edge to edge.
It began with the scorework around all four edges, a product of a single short, straight chisel-end stamp chased repeatedly around the surface on all sides, the chasing (repeated application of the stamp in the same spots) deepening the line to create a sharp, clearly defined border. Within the border, Wings stamped a tiny crescent wingéd motif at evenly spaced intervals. I believe whoever created the stamp design intended it to look like swallows in distant flight, but in truth, it looks a bit like a bat — tiny creatures of twilight whose place in our ecosystem is essential.
The crescent motif reappears inside the border, with it replicated on all four sides: single arcs that form, more or less, a half-circle, and are usually used to represent clouds or crescent moons. Here, they could be either, although in our world lately, the clouds have been far more visible at night than the moon in any phase. As Wings has arranged them here, they resemble a web of sorts, a benevolent cosmic one that holds our solar system and our world softly in its embrace . . . and it’s the perfect lens through which to see the remainder of the stampwork, freehand micro-texturing.
The entire center of the cuff is indeed highly textured; it both looks and feels like old-style tufa-cast work. But Wings creates the same aged effect with his trademark freehand stampwork, accomplished with a single tiny divot-end stamp and hundreds of strikes of the jeweler’s hammer — a hammer that is made of five pounds of solid steel. It’s heavy, laborious work, and when he creates a piece that requires covering this much ground, so to speak, his shoulders and hands feel it by the time he’s done. Here, the pattern reminds me of the millions of stars in our galaxy, clearly visible in spectacular depth on our clearest nights.
Together, the entire pattern also evokes the geometry and symmetry of old-school Art Deco-era work. Indeed, the notions of webs and bats play perfectly into that, with all the underlying Gothic detail that that era’s spare elegance has always enjoyed. There’s nothing frightening or forbidding about this piece though.
No, this one is all mystery and magic and medicine, the web of stars that holds the world, the gift of light in the darkest hours.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2023; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
